AThis time next year, the Election Commission will announce the dates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Normally, with barely a year left, the opposition is expected to finalize its strategies and agenda. Let’s take a look at the summary of last week’s headlines: Rahul Gandhi returns from abroad; Uproar in Parliament, Opposition demands formation of Joint Parliamentary Committee on Adani, BJP apologizes to Rahul; Trinamool Congress and Nationalist Congress Party lead a protest march to the office of the Enforcement Directorate; Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee meet in Kolkata, discuss anti-BJP, non-Congress front; Banerjee will meet Naveen Patnaik next week. there were many others, But they will be no different from what the opposition did weeks ago, or months or years ago.
Vyapam, Rafale, Kovid-19, Chinese intrusion, unemployment, price rise – all these are old. New session of Parliament, new slogans – with the same old intention of bringing Prime Minister Narendra Modi down from his seat.
Last week, the Aam Aadmi Party and Bharat Rashtra Samithi joined the Congress in protest against alleged abuse Central Investigation Agencies and JPC Committee on Adani; The Trinamool Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party called off the protest. In earlier days, TMC and NCP were with Congress, not AAP and BRS.
Meetings between Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, K Chandrasekhar Rao, Arvind Kejriwal, HD Kumaraswamy and others have been making headlines over the years. They had the same agenda. So there were results.
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Voter fatigue?
What is the opposition doing a year before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections that they did not do in 2018? Essentially, nothing is different except the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which encouraged the Congress to claim its number one position in the opposition camp. But Travel It seems to be already fading from public memory even within Congress
Public appearances aside, ask any opposition leader about their best hope in 2024. Most of them will tell you that this is to bring down the BJP’s tally below 250 in the 543-seat Lok Sabha. They think this will be the beginning of the end of the Modi era in Indian politics – they think. And who knows what opportunities it may provide for Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee and the rest if BJP’s numbers go down further.
And what is he doing to bring down the BJP’s seat tally when his previous efforts have only increased it – from 282 in 2014 to 303 in 2019? Well, opposition leaders say that the National Democratic Alliance has “maxed out” several states in the 2014 and 2019 elections. They got 73 and 64 out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh; 42 and 41 out of 48 in Maharashtra; 27 and 28 out of 29 in Madhya Pradesh; all 25 and 26 in Rajasthan and Gujarat; 17 and 25 out of 28 in Karnataka; 31 and 39 out of 40 in Bihar; 12 out of 14 in both elections in Jharkhand; 10 out of 11 and nine in Chhattisgarh; seven out of 10 and 10 in Haryana; And four and five in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in both the elections.
In these dozen states alone, in the last two elections, the NDA is holding on to a little less than 300 Lok Sabha seats. Opposition leaders will tell you that the BJP is “maxing out” in these states. This number, he feels, will drop by at least 20-25 per cent, bringing the BJP’s tally below 250 in the Lok Sabha in 2024. This is also because he feels that the ruling party may not improve its seat tally significantly in other Lok Sabha elections. states.
And why do they think that BJP’s seat tally will reduce in those dozen states? First, there is the max out principle, the seats can only go down. Second, the BJP has lost key allies – Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra and Nitish Kumar in Bihar.
Obviously, the opposition is conveniently ignoring other factors. For example, in Bihar, Nitish Kumar had split relationship With BJP before 2014 elections. The BJP had to go with Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. But still NDA won 31 out of these 40 seats. Since then, the popularity of Nitish Kumar has only decreased. And Kushwaha and Chirag Paswan are all set to forge an alliance with the BJP once again in 2024.
Similarly, a grand alliance between Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal managed to bring down the NDA’s tally to 64 in 2019 from 73 in 2014. To oust the BSP from this alliance, there may be a search for the BJP as well. Its 2014 tally is better in UP, especially with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath rising in popularity.
Modi was the most important factor in the 2014 and 2019 elections. And the BJP’s allies benefited more from their alliance than the other way around. This was evident from the performance of Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United)—two seats without the BJP in 2014 and 16 with the BJP in 2019. There is no evidence of decline in popularity of PM Modi in these states.
Opposition leaders are also seeing some protests against the BJP in other states. They are expecting a drop in BJP’s tally in 2019, given the way Mamata Banerjee had defeated the party in the last assembly election – 18 in 2019. Similarly, they are with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s realy – 8 in 2019. From – see BJP slipping in OdishaSthreatening and fighting back.
Essentially, the opposition’s hope is in the voter,Tired of Modi after two terms. This gives them confidence that they can continue to do the same thing and deliver a different result in 2024.
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BJP’s retaliatory steps
Opposition leaders are living in the fabric of time. Their perception of the BJP in the dozen states mentioned above is based on optimism and a degree of wishful thinking. To date, there is no sign from the ground to suggest that Modi voters are reconsidering or that some of them have joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
See the difference in approach of ruling party and opposition parties. BJP is working on its weak areas, It has already deployed 70 senior leaders, including ministers, to work in around 144 Lok Sabha constituencies, including many it has lost. Each of them has been given a cluster of three to four seats.
The Party’s efforts to enter hitherto uncharted territories continue in full swing. Glance through the headlines of the past week and you’ll see that the BJP is preparing its 2024—and even 2029—roadmap. on March 12 Amit Shah was in Thrissur Kerala – where the BJP did not get a single seat in 2019 – to address a rally and take stock of the party’s preparations for the next elections. PM Modi is likely to visit the state this week.
on Friday, shah met Chiranjeevi, an actor-turned-politician, is a Congressman who has retired from active politics, and his son, RRR Star, Ram Charan, in Delhi.
There was apparently nothing political in this meeting. But it comes at a time when Chiranjeevi’s younger brother, Jana Sena’s Pawan Kalyan, is aligning with the Telugu Desam Party, an ally of the BJP. And despite the ruling party, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress Party, being friendly and showing no intention of meeting anyone from the opposition camp, the BJP is trying to expand its presence in Andhra Pradesh.
In Tamil Nadu, the land of Dravidian politics, the BJP is still trying to find its footing. All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) led by state unit chief Annamalai EK Palaniswami is looking for a course independent of it. Hindu informed of, It came a few days after the eps Involved Nearly a dozen BJP leaders join AIADMK While the BJP high command has not taken any decision on the alliance, Annamalai’s claim shows that the BJP does not want to be trapped in the AIADMK’s fold and wants to carve out its own identity.
On Friday, Maharashtra BJP President Chandrashekhar Bawankule was cited in The Times of India A party meeting said that in the 2024 assembly elections, the BJP would contest 240 seats, and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena would get the remaining 48 seats.
This created an uproar in the ruling coalition. However later Bawankule demanded put a cover On the controversy, saying that his remarks were misinterpreted and the seat-sharing between the allies was yet to be finalised, political observers in the state attributed it to BJP’s future expansion plan at the expense of its new ally. seen as a sign. Bawankule was apparently testing the waters.
These examples show us that the BJP is relentless in its efforts to consolidate and expand at the cost of both allies and opponents. It goes well beyond 2024.
DK Singh is the political editor of ThePrint. views are personal
(Editing by Therese Sudeep)